The music for Antony Tudor’s Pillar of Fire, Arnold
Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night).
was inspired by a nineteenth century two-character German poem Weib
und die Welt (Woman and the World). Set in a time when
a child born out of wedlock was not condoned in polite society, the
poem deals with a pregnant woman who is afraid that her fiancé
will not marry her. He, being truly in love with her, accepts the fact
and tells her that the child will be considered his.

Pillar of Fire is basically the same type of story set in balletic
terms and with additional characters. Three sisters, the Eldest Sister,
a prim, straight-laced spinster; Hagar, the middle sister, who desperately
wants love, marriage and a family; and the Youngest Sister, a spoiled
flirt, able to collect men as a bee collects honey, live in a small
town at the turn of the century. A Friend, with whom Hagar is in love
comes to visit. While he has come to see Hagar, he is a polite, conventional
man of his time who is not yet aware of how much Hagar loves him. The
other sisters, somewhat jealous of Hagar decide they must have what
should be hers and the Youngest Sister flirts outrageously with the
Friend. They go inside and Hagar, left outside, is ignored. Frustrated,
angry, and seeing her last chance of a happy married life gone forever,
Hagar observes the House Opposite, where, it is said, lovers go to spend
time together, and, in her imagination, sees into the house and observes
what is said to go on there. A man comes out of the house and sees her
watching. Under other circumstances, etiquette would require that Hagar,
without being rude, not acknowledge him, but since Hagar feels that
she has lost her only chance for a traditional love life, she is attracted
to him. Her sisters come out of their house and the Friend and her Youngest
Sister go off together. Hagar is frantic, and when the Man From the
House Opposite returns she welcomes him and they dance together, at
the end of which they go into the House Opposite.

Having defied the conventions of the times, Hagar is ostracized by the
neighbors and she and her sisters are now outcasts. The Friend comes
to visit offering sympathy and help, but the embarrassed Hagar cannot
accept it. She wishes help from the townspeople, and, finally, from
her seducer, but he observes her as if she had never existed. The Friend
returns, and, seeing Hagar’s despair, firmly, but tenderly tells
her, in a final pas de deux, that he loves her and will stand by her
and give her the happiness she so desperately wants.

Pillar of Fire received its world premiere by American Ballet
Theatre on April 8, 1942 at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York,
danced by Nora Kaye (Hagar), Lucia Chase (Eldest Sister), Annabelle
Lyon (Youngest Sister), Antony Tudor (The Friend), and Hugh Laing (The
Young Man From the House Opposite).

This new production was given its World Premiere by American Ballet
Theatre at City Center, New York on October 23, 2003.